911 calls from Texas floods reveal chaotic and desperate pleas for rescues

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — In an instant, frantic voices overwhelmed the two county emergency dispatchers on duty in the Texas Hill Country as catastrophic flooding inundated cabins and youth camps along the Guadalupe River.

A firefighter clinging to a tree who watched his wife be swept away. A family breaking through their roof, hoping for rescue. A woman calling from an all-girls camp, waters swirling around and unsure how to escape.

Their panic-stricken pleas were among more than 400 calls for help across Kerr County last summer when unimaginable floods hit during the overnight hours on the July Fourth holiday, according to recordings of the calls released Friday.

“There’s water filling up super fast, we can’t get out of our cabin,” a camp counselor told a dispatcher above the screams of campers in the background. “We can’t get out of our cabin, so how do we get to the boats?”

Amazingly, everyone in the cabin and the rest of campers at Camp La Junta were rescued.

The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide during the holiday weekend, including at least 117 in Kerr County alone. Most were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by county officials.

One woman called for help as the water closed in on her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.

“We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there,” she said in a shaky voice.

A spokesperson for the parents of the children and counselors who died at Camp Mystic declined to comment on the release of the recordings.

Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard and didn’t receive any warning when the floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.

Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.

Many people were rescued by boats and emergency vehicles. A few desperate pleas came from people floating away in RVs. Some survivors were found in trees and on rooftops.

But some of the calls released Friday came from people who did not survive, said Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who warned that the audio is unsettling.

“The tree I’m in is starting to lean and it’s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?” Bradley Perry, a firefighter, calmy told a dispatcher, adding that he saw his wife, Tina, and their RV wash away.

“I’ve probably got maybe five minutes left,” he said.

Bradley Perry did not survive. His wife was later found clinging to a tree, still alive.

In another heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building

“We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can’t get to," she said. "We are flooding almost all the way to the top.”

The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.

Some people called back multiple times, climbing higher and higher in houses to let rescuers know where they were and that their situations were getting more dire. Families called from second floors, then attics, then roofs sometimes in the course of 30 or 40 minutes, revealing how fast and how high the waters rose.

As daylight began to break, the call volume increased, with people reporting survivors in trees or stuck on roofs, or cars floating down the river.

Britt Eastland, the co-director of Camp Mystic, asked for search and rescue and the National Guard to be called, saying as many as 40 people there were missing. “We’re out of power. We hardly have any cell service,” he said.

The 911 recordings show that relatives and friends outside of the unfolding disaster and those who had made it to safety had called to get help for loved ones trapped in the flooding.

One woman said a friend, an elderly man, was trapped in his home with water up to his head. She had realized his phone cut out as she was trying to relay instructions from a 911 operator.

Overwhelmed by the endless calls, dispatchers tried to comfort the panic-stricken callers yet were forced to move on to the next one. They advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.

“There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising,” said a woman who called from Camp Mystic.

The same woman called back later.

“How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?“ she asked. “Can you already send someone here? With the boats?”

She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.

“I don’t know," the dispatcher said. “I don't know.”

Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Ed White in Detroit; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.

FILE - Camper's belongings sit outside one of Camp Mystic's cabins near the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area, July 7, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. (AP Photo/Eli Hartman, file)

FILE - Damage is seen on July 8, 2025, near Hunt, Texas, after a flash flood swept through the area. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, file)

FILE - Rain falls as Irene Valdez visits a make-shift memorial for flood victims along the Guadalupe River, Sunday, July 13, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

FILE - A lone tree stands in the debris from structures that were wiped out after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City high school senior was jailed Friday on a federal arson charge after authorities say he set a fire that severely burned a sleeping subway passenger.

Hiram Carrero, 18, was not required to enter a plea during his arraignment in Manhattan federal court. The fire early Monday morning is the latest in a string of incidents of people being lit ablaze on public transit across the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni ordered Carrero detained, citing the “heinousness of the crime,” after prosecutors appealed Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger’s decision to release him to home confinement under his mother's supervision.

“It’s hard for me to understand why an 18-year-old young man who’s in high school is out at 3 o’clock in the morning setting people on fire,” Caproni said.

Carrero is accused in a criminal complaint of igniting a piece of paper and dropping it near the 56-year-old passenger around 3 a.m. Monday on a northbound 3 train at the 34th Street—Penn Station stop near Madison Square Garden and Macy’s flagship store in midtown Manhattan.

The passenger stumbled to the platform at the next station, 42nd Street—Times Square, with his legs and torso on fire, according to surveillance images included in Carrero’s criminal complaint. Police officers quickly extinguished the flames and the passenger was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

“The victim very well could have died in this case,” prosecutor Cameron Molis said.

Carrero was arrested Thursday in Harlem, where his lawyer said he lives with his disabled mother and acts as her primary caregiver, bringing her to medical appointments. She attended his arraignment but declined to speak to reporters.

According to the complaint, Carrero stepped onto the train only briefly, lit the fire and then fled the station while the passenger lay burning. He then took a bus home.

Carrero faces at least seven years in prison if he’s convicted. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4, though that will be canceled if prosecutors bring the case to a grand jury and secure an indictment by then.

Carrero’s lawyer, Jennifer Brown, said there was “no disagreement that the allegations are extremely serious.”

But, she said, Carrero is a “very young man with no (criminal) record and a mother willing to take him in.”

Before Caproni stepped in, Lehrburger had agreed to release Carrero to home confinement with electronic monitoring and a requirement that he undergo a mental health evaluation and submit to drug testing.

Caproni reversed the decision at an after-hours hearing on Friday.

Brown, attempting to convince her to uphold Carrero’s release, cited news reports that investigators had been looking into whether the passenger had lit himself on fire.

Carrero’s case went to federal court in part because it was investigated by a federal task force, the New York Arson and Explosives Task Force that is run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in conjunction with the city’s police and fire departments. He is not facing charges in state court.

According to the complaint, investigators zeroed in on Carrero by comparing images from the incident to body-worn camera footage recorded in October when police stopped him for riding his bicycle through a red light. Brown said he was delivering for Uber Eats at the time.

Carrero and the man investigators were searching for had the same distinctive mustache, hat with white lettering across the front, backpack and gray hooded sweatshirt in both sets of images, the complaint said.

Last month, federal prosecutors in Chicago charged a man with pouring gasoline on a woman, chased her through a train car and setting her on fire. In December 2024, a woman asleep a stopped subway train in Brooklyn was killed when a stranger set her clothing on fire.

FILE - A subway approaches an above ground station in the Brooklyn borough of New York with the New York City skyline in the background, June 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)